Executive Administration

Lara Bradshaw, PhD

Program Specialist

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Lara Bradshaw, PhD, completed her Doctorate in Critical Studies in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2015. Lara’s research explores television and digital media, and how the concept of “wellbeing” has transformed the 21st century psyche through the proliferation of figures like the “hoarder” to the digital media scrapbooker. Lara joined the Executive Office in July 2015 as a Project Specialist and assists with a wide variety of communication and research projects.

Lauren Carter

Media Production Manager

Renita Thomas-Franklin

Administrative Assistant

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Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, Renita Thomas Franklin earned a B.S. in communication and theater from Jackson State University. She moved to Los Angeles where she continued her education at The Fashion Institute of Design And Merchandising, earning her A.A. in Visual Mechanizing and Marketing Communications. She is member of the SAG and enjoys performing on stage and in film whenever opportunities and time permits.

Aaron Zarrow

Program Administrator

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On staff since 2011, program administrator in the Executive Office, Aaron Zarrow joined the organization for the first time in 1995 as a production assistant. In 1996 he became Associate Producer of The Last Days feature documentary. His later credits include Senior Year, a 13-part PBS series; Funny Old Guys, an HBO special presentation; Sir! No Sir! winner of the 2005 LA Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary; and Healed: Music, Medicine and Life with MS, a 2014 PBS documentary.

Administration

Suzy Hovanesyan

Operations Specialist

Zovaira Rodriguez

Procurement specialist and office assistant

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Zovaira Rodriguez graduated from CSULA with a B.S. in criminal justice and a minor in anthropology. She has been a member of the American Cancer Society for 10 years. She believes that her work at the Institute will cause a ripple effect that will make the world a better place.

Cynthia Schirmer

Finance Manager

Advancement

Frieda Kahn

Executive Director of Development

Nick Kennedy

Assistant Director of Annual Giving

Jayne Perilstein

Managing Director of Advancement

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Based in New York and Philadelphia, Jayne has served as Managing Director of Advancement for USC Shoah Foundation since 2012. Prior to joining USC, Jayne was President of The ARJAY Group and spent over 25 years as a special event, fundraising and volunteer management consultant. She is a graduate of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Christopher came to USC from K-12 education, after five years of teaching high school special education in LAUSD and managing college readiness programs and school design initiatives for a large charter management organization.

He holds a BA in History from UC-Riverside, an MA in Special Education from Loyola Marymount, and an MA in Public Policy from USC.

Outside of USC, Christopher works on refugee relief and education for the non-profit Books Not Bombs campaign.

Janiece Richard

Assistant Director of Annual Giving

Andrea Waldron

Executive Director of Development

Nicole Watkins

Director of Donor Relations

Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Shefali Deshpande

Project Specialist

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Shefali is the Project Specialist for the Center for Advanced Genocide Research. She’s a recent graduate of USC with a major in political science and a minor in musical theatre. Her inspiration to work at the Shoah Foundation stemmed from a research trip to Rwanda through the “Problems Without Passports” summer course, through the school of International Relations. There, she studied women and their post-genocide role in rebuilding Rwanda and breaking gender barriers. In addition to her work at the Shoah Foundation, Shefali performs in musical theatre and screen work around Los Angeles, and is a singer-songwriter. She finds that there is a lot of overlap with social awareness and performance art, and is lucky to have these both present in her everyday life.

Emilie Garrigou-Kempton, PhD

Academic Outreach Officer

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Emilie Garrigou-Kempton is the Academic Relations and Outreach officer at the Center for Advanced Genocide Research. A native of France, Emilie Garrigou-Kempton received a B.A. and a M.A. in Philosophy from Bordeaux University and a M.A. in International Development from Lyons University. She worked for several international humanitarian agencies and was an ethics advisor for the Los Angeles Unified School District before obtaining her Ph.D. in French literature and gender studies at USC.

Martha Stroud, PhD

Research Program Officer

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Martha Stroud is the Research Program Officer for the Center for Advanced Genocide Research. An anthropologist with special interests in the anthropology of genocide, psychological anthropology, and Indonesia, Martha earned her PhD in Medical Anthropology from UC Berkeley in 2015. Martha’s research focuses on the Indonesian mass killings and detentions of 1965-1966 and their aftermath. In her doctoral research, which entailed over two years of fieldwork in Java, Martha explored the ways in which the events of 1965-1966 continue to emerge in daily life in Indonesia today, 50 years after the killings first began.

Collections

Crispin Brooks

Curator of the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive

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Crispin Brooks is the curator of the USC Shoah Foundation’s visual history archive. Educated in Russian studies at the University of Manchester and University College London’s School of Slavonic & East European Studies and an accredited translator of the British Institute of Linguists, he has published a book and articles on Russian avant-garde poetry and the Holocaust in Ukraine.

Cheng Fang

Research Specialist

Kia Hays

Project Manager

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Kia Hays is the Project Manager of New Dimensions in Testimony in the Collections Department. Kia joined USC Shoah Foundation shortly after graduating with her master’s in Public Diplomacy from the USC Annenberg School of Communications in 2013.

Scott Spencer, PhD

Project Manager of the Holocaust/WWII Audiovisual Collections for the Preserving the Legacy Initiative

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Scott Spencer is the Program Administrator for the Preserving the Legacy initiative at USC Shoah Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology and has years of experience with oral history archives, most notably at New York University and City University of New York. Spencer is also a Part Time Lecturer with the USC Thornton School of Music.

Aleksandra Visser

Research Specialist

Communications

Josh Grossberg

External communications manager

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Josh Grossberg joined the USC Shoah Foundation as public communications manager in August 2013. Prior to that, Josh was an editor and reporter for several newspapers. He has a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a focus on ethnomusicology.

Deanna Hendrick

Social Media

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Deanna Hendrick joined the communication team at USC Shoah Foundation in July 2013. She manages all of the Institute's social media accounts, including the blog, Through Testimony. Deanna graduated cum laude with a BA in journalism and a Spanish minor from California State University, Long Beach. She is currently a candidate for a master's degree in communication management at USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communication.

Rob Kuznia

Coordinator, External Relations

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Publicist Rob Kuznia joined the communication department at USC Shoah Foundation in August 2014. Kuznia worked as a journalist for 15 years, most recently as an education reporter for the Daily Breeze newspaper in Los Angeles, where he won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for his series of stories uncovering corruption at Southern California school district.

Jeffrey Langham, PhD

Webmaster

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Jeffrey Langham oversees the management and the strategic development of the Institute's website. Prior to the Institute, Jeffrey worked at a Los Angeles-area design firm for seven years as a web designer/programmer with experience in print design and copywriting. He received his doctorate in English literature from the University of Southern California.

Robin Migdol

Writer

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Robin Migdol joined USC Shoah Foundation as staff writer in July 2013. She received her master’s in Specialized Journalism-The Arts from USC and her bachelor’s in English and film studies from UC Davis. She has written for a variety of publications including The Village Voice/LA Weekly, LA STAGE Times, Palo Alto Weekly and the Stanford News Service, focusing on features and arts.

Education

Liz Bommarito

Regional Consultant, New York Area

Amy Carnes, PhD

Associate Director of Education – Evaluation and Scholarship

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Amy Marczewski Carnes, PhD, completed her doctorate in French at UCLA in 2007 and worked at Human Rights Watch in Los Angeles before starting at USC Shoah Foundation in 2008. Since then, she has overseen educational projects throughout Europe, curated two exhibitions of testimony, and taught a course at USC titled Rebuilding Rwanda: Memory, Testimony, and Living Together after Genocide. In her current role, she oversees evaluation of all Institute programs.

Sara Cohan

Consultant, Armenia Education Program

Lesly Culp

Head of Programs, Education

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Lesly Culp is an ELA National Board Certified teacher who holds both her B.A. in English, Language and Literature and her Master’s in Education, Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Southern California. She has been a high school English teacher for 18 years and has had an active role in designing curriculum and teacher professional development. In September of 2014 Lesly Culp joined USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education team as Senior Content Specialist/Trainer. In this role, Lesly delivers professional development and creates multimedia content for IWitness and other testimony-based educational resources, works closely with Echoes & Reflections partners, Facing History and Ourselves partners, U.S. Regional Consultants, and the Junior Intern Program – among other projects.

Emmanuel Debono

Regional Consultant, France

Caitlin Joy Dobson

Coordinator of Educational Programs

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Caitlin Dobson holds bachelor’s degrees in cultural anthropology and journalism from Michigan State University, with a strong background in philanthropic travel. She graduated in 2015 from the USC Master of Public Diplomacy program, with a focus on nonprofit advocacy and human rights, specifically women’s rights and gender studies.

Joan Getman

Deputy Director of Education

Inna Gogina

International Digital Education Associate

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Inna Gogina has worked at USC Shoah Foundation in a variety of capacities since 1999, including assistant production coordinator, historical content analyst, coordinator of international programs, and, currently, international digital education associate. Gogina holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in classical philology from Moscow State University and a master’s degree in public administration from California State University, Northridge. She is currently pursuing an MLIS degree at San Jose State University, focusing on digital services and emerging technologies.

Sandra Gruner

Consultant, Guatemala

Robert Hadley

Consultant, United States

Francesca Innocenti

Executive assistant

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Francesca Innocenti is Executive Assistant to Kori Street and the Education Department. She graduated from USC with a double major in Linguistics and Humanities. She was Translations Coordinator at Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation at Universal from 1998 to 2000, then returned to the USC Shoah Foundation in 2009. Francesca also worked as a translator for E! and SDI Media, an interpreter, a fashion designer and a production sketch artist for Disney Imagineering. Her grandfather Alberto Innocenti was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Greg Irwin

Education Media Specialist

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Greg became the Institute’s Education Media Specialist in May 2014—but his journey with the Institute began years before, while he was pursuing his USC degree in International Relations and Screenwriting. His four years at USC saw him interning with the Education department, conducting research in Rwanda, winning the Institute’s Student Voices Film Contest, and leading its USC student organization. Today, he produces video, design, and written assets for IWitness.

Karen Kim, PhD

Senior Researcher and Evaluator

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Karen Kim is the senior researcher and evaluator for the USC Shoah Foundation. She was previously a faculty member at CSU Fullerton; education director for a National Science Foundation funded center at UCLA; researcher and evaluator of several large-scale, multi-institutional grant projects; and research administrator for the Directors Guild of America. Dr. Kim earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Monika Koszyńska

Regional Consultant, Poland

Anna Lenchovska

Regional Consultant, Ukraine

Jenna Leventhal

IWitness Manager

Martin Šmok

Senior International Program Consultant, Czech Republic

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Martin Šmok is the Senior International Program Consultant and Regional Consultant in the Czech Republic. He has worked for the organization since 1995. Šmok authored several groundbreaking documentary films and permanent exhibitions focusing on modern history of Central Europe and its Jews. He also is the chairman of OpenEye, a Czech NGO devoted to confronting propagandistic manipulations of totalitarian regimes.

Kirk Stageberg

IWitness Technology Coordinator

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Kirk Stageberg joined the USC Shoah Foundation's Education Department as Office Technology Coordinator in 2014 and handles the IWitness Help Desk operations. Prior to that, he worked as b2b web content specialist and senior customer service representative for a leading apparel company. He has a Technical Associate's Degree in Drafting/CAD with Emphasis in architectural drafting from High-Tech Institute in Arizona.

Andrea Szőnyi

Regional Consultant, Hungary

Roseline Twagiramariya

Rwandan Educational Administrator

Davis Wamonhi

Regional Consultant, Rwanda

Sarah Warby

Regional Consultant, Australia

Claudia Wiedeman, PhD

Associate Director – Educational Technologies and Training

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Dr. Claudia Ramirez Wiedeman joined the Institute as Associate Director - Educational Technologies and Training in 2013. Previously, Dr. Wiedeman was a tenured professor at Whittier College where she taught in the education department. She earned her PhDfrom UCLA in education with an emphasis in applied linguistics in 1998. She has presented and published on a variety of issues in urban education and bilingualism.

Cate Wilson

Regional Consultant, IWitness Detroit

Information Technology Services

Sandra Aguilar

Archivist

Doug Ballman

Manager, External Relations—Online Archive

Shiraz Bhathena

Video Archive and Post-Production Specialist

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Video archivist and post-production specialist Shiraz Bhathena started at USC Shoah Foundation in July, 2014. A Wisconsin native, Shiraz graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, with a bachelor’s in conceptual studies of film, with a minor in business. He received his masters in moving image archive studies at the University of California Los Angeles.

Mills Chang

Senior Software Architect

Daryn Eller

Assistant Archivist

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Daryn Eller is responsible for archiving the Shoah Foundation’s institutional audiovisual records and helps provide archival research and writing for in-house video productions. Prior to joining the Foundation, Daryn was a magazine and book writer. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University.

Ryan Fenton-Strauss

Video Archive and Post-Production Manager

Georgiana Gomez

Video Archive and Post-Production Specialist

Zachary Goode

Video Archive and Post-Production Supervisor

Kathy Guyton

Office Manager, ITS

Toan Nguyen

Systems Programmer

Susan Popler

Project Manager, Visual History Archive Program

Michael Russell

Programmer Analyst

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Michael Russell is a lead web developer at USC Shoah foundation. He received a BA in French from University College London, England, and has been a software engineer in the Los Angeles area since 1983.